There is no such thing as a "best tank" per se. It should be seen compared with the local conditions.

I completely agree. Numbers are also important. If a tank is much cheaper and faster to build it wont happen that your superior tank will only encounter a single enemy tank but several of them. A lot of mice are the cats death so to speak.

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Also, IMO you can't say "Chechenya showed the design flaws". Chechenya (or Afganistan) showed the stupidity of military comanders who sent tanks into unproper terrain without proper support. You can't put tanks into canyons and say - look - it's catching fire from a Molotov thrown from above.

Here i disagree. While it is true that the decision to send half equipped and unready tanks into an urban conflict with lacking support units was the major factor for their losses it DID show a design flaw of the current russian tanks. The propellant for the two part ammunition is simply to exposed and catches fire far to easy. This was also shown in Iraq, even if the Iraqy T-72 didnt had the latest reactive armour and had obsolete fire control system, the internal layout is the same, as is the autoloader and the problems with the exposed propellant. Once hit the tank burns like nothing and the survivalchance of a crew in case of a hit is next to zero. Therefore a lot of crews abandoned their tanks after the first one in a colum was destroyed.

And the autoloader is causing a second problem. Since the Projectile is a two part one the maximum length of the "dart" is limited compared to western one part ammunition.

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The poor combat performance of the T-55/54 is mainly due to the lack of skilled crew in the armies it has served in.

While this is certainly true there are occurances where the T-55 fought with well trained crews like in several middle eastern wars. Both Syria and Egypt had a rather high training standard for their tanks, but the Israeli ones still kicked their butts. A nice example was the Jom Kippur war where the Israelis employed numerous Shotka (a british Centurion upgunned with the 105 L7 Gun) with great success against syrian T-55 and T-62 (which is basically just a slightly enlarged T-55 so it can hold a 125mm gun)

Some countries in Africa still keep T-34/85 in stocks - in such areas T-55 is da beast even in basic configuration.
There are also many upgrade packages on the market, not only the Russian/Ukrainian ones, just look at Egyptian Ramses 2 or Israel selling parts of Tiran package (105mm M68/L7 gun in both cases).

I completely agree. Numbers are also important. If a tank is much cheaper and faster to build it wont happen that your superior tank will only encounter a single enemy tank but several of them. A lot of mice are the cats death so to speak.
Here i disagree. While it is true that the decision to send half equipped and unready tanks into an urban conflict with lacking support units was the major factor for their losses it DID show a design flaw of the current russian tanks. The propellant for the two part ammunition is simply to exposed and catches fire far to easy. This was also shown in Iraq, even if the Iraqy T-72 didnt had the latest reactive armour and had obsolete fire control system, the internal layout is the same, as is the autoloader and the problems with the exposed propellant. Once hit the tank burns like nothing and the survivalchance of a crew in case of a hit is next to zero. Therefore a lot of crews abandoned their tanks after the first one in a colum was destroyed.

And the autoloader is causing a second problem. Since the Projectile is a two part one the maximum length of the "dart" is limited compared to western one part ammunition.

While this is certainly true there are occurances where the T-55 fought with well trained crews like in several middle eastern wars. Both Syria and Egypt had a rather high training standard for their tanks, but the Israeli ones still kicked their butts. A nice example was the Jom Kippur war where the Israelis employed numerous Shotka (a british Centurion upgunned with the 105 L7 Gun) with great success against syrian T-55 and T-62 (which is basically just a slightly enlarged T-55 so it can hold a 125mm gun)

Most of the soviet equipment wich saw battle.....was in poorly trained crews

For example the equipment for the Arab armies during the six day wars
*soviet ship dumps containers filled with Tanks and weapons and stuff
HERE you go COMERADES! Enjoy! Manuel is inside
...
..
"Achmed! Can you read russian?Abdul? Saddam? Anyone???
Now the last part is not true, but most arab armies got there equipment in a way like that

Take the egyptians for example in the yom kippur war. These WHERE trained and their combat performance was pretty high.

Egyptain AT-1 Sagger crews for example, destroyed dozens of isreali tanks in a few hours..

Few things:
1. please use english language outside of section designated for your language.
2. nobody insulted you or your country - here was talk only about T55/t54 and other designs of that are, therefore no need to insult back anyone.
3. trolling is against rules as well.

For violating these rules you can get sanctions more more than few days, so please in future follow them - or face consequences.

The T72 was developed after the Leopard 1, M60 etc, around 10 years later IIRC. And yes, the T-64 was a beautiful tank and the first Tank with composite type armour.
But they never aimed to build a tank which was comparable in a 1 on 1 battle since their goal always was to field bigger numbers.

While this is certainly true there are occurances where the T-55 fought with well trained crews like in several middle eastern wars. Both Syria and Egypt had a rather high training standard for their tanks, but the Israeli ones still kicked their butts.

Israel's overall military strategy also played major role there. The soviet export tanks are also known for being stripped from essential equipment such as fire control and proper sights.

Schwarzie, on 09 April 2011 - 03:32 PM, said:

(which is basically just a slightly enlarged T-55 so it can hold a 125mm gun)

Israel's overall military strategy also played major role there. The soviet export tanks are also known for being stripped from essential equipment such as fire control and proper sights.

I didnt want to discuss the whole war, just the tank battles where the syrians had a numerical superiority to begin with and well trained troops and still lost due to inferiority of material.

And IIRC did the stripping down of war material begin with the T-72 which used a lot of technologies which were classified at that time (and for what the russians are now biting their asses since the piss poor performance of these Monkey T-72s is now hurint the sales of the not stripped down tanks they are selling today), the T-54/55 was exported in "normal versions".

@Theta
Yup, and while its true that most of the battles took place against poorly trained crews there were instances where the opposite was true (Yom Kippur war, Syria and Egypt) and they still lost. And the cheyena conflict showed that the russian training isnt the best either.

I didnt want to discuss the whole war, just the tank battles where the syrians had a numerical superiority to begin with and well trained troops and still lost due to inferiority of material.

Better strategy > numerical tank superiority. Even the skill of the crew becomes irrelevant, if the commander just tells you to zerg rush. I also forgot to point out Israel's air superiority. But in any case, you are completely right about the T-55 and T-62 getting utterly wiped out by superior firepower.

Schwarzie, on 10 April 2011 - 01:09 AM, said:

And IIRC did the stripping down of war material begin with the T-72 which used a lot of technologies which were classified at that time (and for what the russians are now biting their asses since the piss poor performance of these Monkey T-72s is now hurint the sales of the not stripped down tanks they are selling today)

And that performance comes from the invasion of Iraq, which is poorly maintained, under equipped T-72's against USA's top of the line M1A2's. It's like destroying a T-26 with a T-32 and calling him a n00b. Also, the monkey models were meant to give the west false information about their design, such as the vechile's armor (witch off course was obsolete anyway by 2001).

Schwarzie, on 10 April 2011 - 01:09 AM, said:

the T-54/55 was exported in "normal versions".

Could be, but they still didn't supply it with a proper user's guide.

Schwarzie, on 10 April 2011 - 01:09 AM, said:

And the cheyena conflict showed that the russian training isnt the best either.

Because they only had a bunch of new recruits, while the Chechen fighters were experienced Afghanistan veterans.

That said, i¨m still not a russia only fanboy. I just want to point out that the T-55 itself wasn't a bad design, while the T-62 for example was.

And that performance comes from the invasion of Iraq, which is poorly maintained, under equipped T-72's against USA's top of the line M1A2's. It's like destroying a T-26 with a T-32 and calling him a n00b. Also, the monkey models were meant to give the west false information about their design, such as the vechile's armor (witch off course was obsolete anyway by 2001).

Today you can buy upgrade packs to bring your Monkey T-72s up to the latest standards (ok, not completely, the T72BM1 aka T90 needs more then a field refit.) And even before that there were upgrade kits for those tanks (even though they still were a bit behind the latest sowjet upgrades.) Germany received several of such upgraded T-72 and used them after the unification for gun trials, there are several pictures of the results in the net (but dont ask me for links now )

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Could be, but they still didn't supply it with a proper user's guide.

Unlike most Middle east countries the Syrians and especially the Egypts trained their crews well even with help of sowjet instructors.

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That said, i¨m still not a russia only fanboy. I just want to point out that the T-55 itself wasn't a bad design, while the T-62 for example was.

In its time it was excellent otherwise it wouldnt have gotten all those upgrades. And the T-62 in contrast was taken out of active duty rather fast.